Gov. Jay Inslee visited south King County yesterday to meet local officials regarding the need to build more residential buildings near public transit, speak with residents of a drug-free recovery home about their experience in recovery, and to meet with climate activists at Highline High School.
At Auburn’s Postmark Center for the Arts, local city officials and mayors met with Inslee to discuss efforts among cities to greenlight more residential building construction closer to fast, reliable public transit networks. Building more transit-oriented housing will help Washington meet its interconnected goals of building more middle-income and affordable housing while making environmentally sustainable transportation options available to all Washingtonians. Inslee has been working with legislators on legislation and considers this policy crucial to expanding affordable housing across the state.
The governor also met with residents of an Oxford House in Federal Way, a self-run, drug-free recovery home for people in recovery from substance use. The Oxford House network in Washington includes 347 homes with over 3,000 beds available for adults and children in need of a place to live. The network relies in part on an annual $1.2 million grant from federal funds administered by Washington's Health Care Authority.
The governor then traveled to Highline High School in Burien, where he saw the school’s new electric bus and met with students and alumni who successfully advocated for school to install solar panels and start a composting program. Climate-minded students like these now have more opportunities to help defeat the climate crisis, thanks to the new Washington Climate Corps Network, which connects young adults and recent grads with careers building a clean energy economy. Washington’s Climate Commitment Act is accelerating investments in projects like Highline's solar retrofit. For the current biennium, the Legislature slated $50 million energy retrofits and solar installations on public buildings and $120 million for medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks and electric school buses.
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